Eye Opener: Apology for Frank Kameny

By
Ed O'Keefe

Happy Monday! President Obama meets with 250 gay rights activists today in the East Room of the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the birth of the gay rights movement. The Obama administration took another step to mark the anniversary last week by formally apologizing to Frank Kameny, who was fired 50 years ago from his government job for being gay.

John Berry, the most senior gay official in the Obama administration, serving as director of the Office of Personnel Management, presented Kameny with an official letter of apology along with the department’s most prestigious award, the Theodore Roosevelt Award, reports The Washington Blade.

“In what we know today was a shameful action, the United States Civil Service Commission in 1957 upheld your dismissal from your job solely on the basis of your sexual orientation,” Berry's letter states. “… And by virtue of the authority vested in me as Director of the Office Of Personnel Management, it is my duty and great pleasure to inform you that I am adding my support … for the repudiation of the reasoning of the 1957 finding by the United States Civil Service Commission to dismiss you from your job solely on the basis of your sexual orientation. Please accept our apology for the consequences of the previous policy of the United States government.”

“Apology accepted,” Kameny replied.

The apology, and Obama's meeting today with gay activists, come as some suggest the president is lagging behind on gay issues as the more Americans embrace the culture, and its call for equal rights.

“Listen,” Mr. Mixner said, “in 1992, what we were begging Bill Clinton about — literally — about whether he was going to say the word ‘gay’ in his convention speech. Even say it. We had to threaten a walkout to get it in.”

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I would hope, then, that apologies are given to those people who held differing political views and were dismissed from jobs or held back from jobs, not limited to those people in the movie industry and government, especially during the "McCarthy era". Were their honest beliefs, with hindsight, cause for discrimination?

I wonder who will be the President fifty years from now when the federal government apologises for the "Defense of Marriage Act"

"In what we know today was a shameful action, the United States Congress, in 1996 passed a law that even as far back as President Obama, was considered discrimination solely on the basis of your sexual orientation."

Some elderly same sex couple (I'll be dead by then) will smile and say "apology accepted."

What a complete journalistic raping David Mixner!!!! That quotation is ripped out of its context and made to say exactly the OPPOSITE of what Mixner actually said!!!

Mixner has been one of the more vocal critics of the Obama Administration. His quote was not about praising Obama in contrast to Bill Clinton. His quote was designed to highlight how public opinion has changed dramatically since 1993, making it unjustifiable for Obama and his Clinton-holdovers like Rahm Emmanuel to continue to act as though gay issues are a third rail.

Uh_huhh The quote is used exactly as it appears in the NYTimes. It was not ripped out of context, nor was its meaning magically altered.
"Journalistic raping"?!? Raping?!? Do you even comprehend what that word means?

Is this the beginning of a new era that the Federal governement along with certain state government will acknowledge the same sex marriage act, to apology for being fired, will this come as a stepping stone for Gay marriage? Why would DC Governemtn acknowledge Gay Marriage from other states, but not perform them, |Is this NOT stupid, or what Marion |Barry said once, about another subject This is a Brain Dead Act?